Are telephones becoming obsolete?

Unplug your phone.

Go ahead. Grab the cable and yank it out of the jack. Then see what happens.

I was horrified when my telephone gave up the ghost last month. I didn’t think life could go on without the benefit of real-time voice communication. Five years ago, that might have been true, but not today.

Call it the telecommunications industry’s dirty little secret: The phone is becoming obsolete.

Don’t believe me? Maybe you should talk with some of the readers who responded to a recent column in which I confessed to being an e-mail addict. They know that the phone’s golden days are gone.

Jan Hilimon ditched her phone because long-distance charges – upward of $1 a minute from Singapore to the United States – are outrageous. “E-mail is my daily way of communicating,” she says. “I live by it.”

Charles Gallo goes on vacation and instead of picking up the telephone to check messages, he goes online. He recalls one getaway to a New Mexico resort that offered no in-room dataports. He had to find a line outside to get connected. “Imagine me, checking my e-mail, sitting in the snow in November at night,” he says.

Adds Bonnie Temple: “I go to school online, research online, and would rather e-mail than make a phone call.”

Don’t misunderstand me. When I declared the primacy of cell phones in a previous commentary, I didn’t mean to imply that the gadgets would be used exclusively for voice communication. In fact, I believe one reason for their popularity is that the wireless devices do so much more than let us talk.

Not to imply that people will stop talking with one another altogether in this new age of digital communication, either. There will always be an occasion to pick up the phone and call mom. Or to reach out and touch a long-lost school friend.

It also isn’t fair for me to suggest that the readers who I mentioned earlier in this column have quit phoning, cold turkey. But it is fair to say that for every e-mail they write, there’s one less phone call they have to make.

We’re still pretty chatty, to be sure. Americans placed a total of 643 billion calls in 1998, the most recent year for which numbers are available, according to the Federal Communication Commission. It’s unlikely that the number of messages carried on telephone lines will taper off in the short term, largely because we dial a local Internet service provider to go online. But in the long term, as DSL, cable, and other broadband delivery systems become more cost-effective, it isn’t inconceivable that we could witness a drop-off in traditional telecom traffic.

That would be fine by me. Yes, I think e-mail can be dangerously addictive. Yes, I think we already spend too much time in front of a screen. And yes, I’m probably contributing to what reader Cindy Green called the “impersonalization of our culture.”

But voice communication, for commercial purposes, is inefficient, expensive, time-consuming, and imprecise.

It took the failure of my telephone to discover that. Specifically, the ringer in my unit went dead recently. Try as hard as I might, I couldn’t get it to work. Ordinarily, I’d run to the nearest hardware store and buy another phone, but there was something about the silence that appealed to me.

Let’s face it, travelers are slaves to their phones. Even as I write this, the passenger on the Amtrak Metroliner behind me is fumbling to answer his beeping cellular phone. Whenever it rings he seems to panic, apparently fearing that he won’t be able to answer it soon enough.

When my phone stopped ringing, the discomfort of not being able to answer every call as it came in soon gave way to curiosity. What would happen if I just left the phone for dead? I was about to find out.

The callers who really needed to reach me left voice-mail messages, and I either called them back or e-mailed them. The ones who didn’t leave messages either e-mailed me or tried back again. If they didn’t leave a voice-mail, they’d never hear from me, because I didn’t know they had called.

My business contacts accepted the new phone regime without so much as a single complaint. But my personal callers balked. “You never answer your phone anymore,” one groused. Another exclaimed, “You’re screening your calls!” – as if that was a shameful thing.

Still, I think I’ll keep my broken phone. Here’s why:

- Many phone calls are unnecessary. For example, I get more than my fair share of publicists who call to “make sure I received a press release.” They ought to know better. When I don’t pick up my phone, they try sending me an e-mail, to which I’m only too happy to respond with a one-liner.

- I’ve been conditioned to drop everything for the phone. When it rings, my figurative train of thought is derailed every time. During the most productive time of day to write – early to mid-morning – I also receive a bulk of my calls. Or I should say got a bulk of my calls.

- Salespeople, prank callers, and people who are generally up to no good don’t leave messages. In other words, I never have to worry about phone sales people interrupting my work day. No more calls that begin with “Sorry, I must have misdialed,” because they hang up after they hear my answering machine message.

I think communications in the 21st century is becoming increasingly bipolar. On the one hand, we’re moving toward more sophisticated video and audio communications, in areas such as teleconferencing collaborative virtual environments. But on the other hand, we’re abandoning older methods of interacting, like the telephone, in favor of more efficient e-mail or other digital communication methods.

It’s a good thing for travelers. One day we may not just be able to turn our phones off. We might be able to throw them away – for good.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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